About 25 talented chess players from throughout the
Chicago metropolitan area are brimming with new knowledge after participating
an intensive day of study on Sunday, Feb. 28, with three of Chicago's
grandmasters.

The instructors included grandmasters Nikola
Mitkov, Dmitry Gurevich and Mesgen Amanov, the state's second, third, and
fourth ranked players respectively, who put together a day of lectures tailored
to the students' needs. Students ranged in age from 6 to 17 and in rating from
about 1150 to over 2200, and were divided by rating into three groups. The
modest tuition fee covered about 60 percent of the cost for the day, and the
ICA Warren Junior Program contributed the remainder.

The invitation-only seminar was open to all ICA Warren Scholars, as well as other students based on instructor
recommendation or recent strong tournament performances. ICA Warren Scholars
are generally ranked within the top 35 or better for their age group in the
country. The seminar took place at Niles North High School, which
recently won the state high school chess championship.
The seminar fits in with the Warren program mission
of developing the talents of the state's most promising chess players, not only
to make them more competitive in chess but also to expose them to an approach
to rigorous study of a subject that will carry over to other disciplines later
in life.

Many of the students who attended the seminar are
academically gifted, and often don't feelproperly challenged or stimulated at school. "I like that at chess
you have a lot of time to think. You can keep thinking and thinking and
thinking until you get the answer," said 13-year-oldWarren Scholar Gavin McClanahan, a 7th
grader from Glenview. "At school sometimes you have to rush--you might have a 20-minute timeframe
to finish something, and it's not enough."

George (Zhaozhi) Li (left), and Nathan Kranjc, Photo Eric Rosen

Gurevich, Mitkov and Amanov all prepared material
designed to challenge the students at the levels they were at. Amanov presented
a 14-point checklist he designed to help players evaluate their position on the
board, including basic concepts of piece development, controlling the center,
and king safety, as well as more advanced concepts of identifying weaknesses
and weak squares and the ability to exchange or trade pieces. Bill Peng, father
of the newest and youngest Warren Scholar, 6-year old David Peng, said his son
found Amanov's presentation very helpful. A few days after the seminar, he
said, "My son and I have already used the checkpoints to analyze several
games." At six, David has already attained a rating of more than 1300 and
is ranked number 14 in the country for players under age 7.

Amanov, 23, a native of Turkmenistan, is Chicago's newest and youngest
grandmaster. Earlier this month, he was happy to hear news that he has been
issued a green card, giving him permanent U.S. residence status. This is good
news for Chicago chess students as well, as Amanov may well be one of the few
people in the U.S. whose college major was chess instruction. He is a graduate
of the Turkmenistan Institute of Sport and Tourism, where chess is a serious
college subject.

Mitkov, a Macedonian native who has lived in Chicago for
several years and teaches for Chicago-based Chess
Education Partners, covered the important topic of
initiative--creating threats and forcing the other side to react--and how to
gain it. Mitkov explained that this includes making active moves that reduce
the number of choices your opponent has to react, playing with tempo and
creating pressure on an opponent's position. Below is one of the games he
covered in his lecture:What is the Initiative?

Taking initiative mean taking control of the
game, creating threats and forcing your opponent to react. Initiative can be
gained in several ways like:

Making
an active move that restricts the opponent's choice of reaction.

Creating
pressure on opponent's position

Playing
with tempo

The initiative of creating threatening moves
cannot be maintained at all time in the game. Therefore it is important, that
you use such an initiative to get a specific (static) advantage: material,
mating attack, better pawn structure, open file, good endgame...etc. As
initiative gives you advantage in play, your aim should be to gain and retain
it. If retreating a piece means losing time, you can retain initiative by
exchanging that piece. If you exchange your active piece with a passive
opponent's piece, you lose time.Sacrificing material is the most common way of creating an initiative.

Rules When You Have the Initiative

Don't
try to win material too soon.

Create
multiple threats

Don't
move the same piece when you can use a different piece.

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4
The first critical moment for me. I had to
decide what type of game I wanted. I decided to surprise him with the sharpest
opening searching for initiative from the very beginning.4.f3
c5 5.d5 b5 6.e4 bxc4 7.Bxc4 Nxd5 8.Bxd5
8.exd5 Qh4+ 9.g3 Qxc48...exd5
9.Qxd5 Nc6 10.Be3 Rb8
Indirect,
active defense. Using more pieces. 11.Rd1 0-0 12.Nge2 Ba6 13.Kf2
The second critical moment. Black has to look for
initiative(to lead the fight), because
of his positional (static) weaknesses.13...Ba5!
Opening the b-file for the Rook, and releasing
the b4 square for the Knight. 14.b3
14.Bxc5 Rxb2 15.Rd2 Bc4; 14.Bg5 Qb6 15.b3 c4+
16.Be3 Qd814...Nb4 15.Qf5 Nd3+ 16.Kg3 Bc7+
Thebishop finished the job on that
diagonal, so he needs to go on the other side to chase the king. 17.f4 Rb6
Bringing more pieces and creating more threats. 18.Nd5 Re6
Pressing the e4 pawn. The alternative is 18...g6
19.Qh3 Re8 20.Nec3 Rbe6 21.Rd2 Rxe4 22.Nxe4 Rxe4 23.Kf3 f5.19.Nxc7
Qxc7 20.Nc3 Qa5 21.Bd2 Bb7 22.h4 Qa6 23.Rdf1 Rfe8 24.h5 Qd6 25.Rh3 Nb4
25...Rf6 26.Qg5 h6 27.Qh4 Bxe4 28.Kh2 Bf526.Bc1
Nxa2 27.Nxa2 Bxe4 28.Qg4 Qd3+ 29.Kf2 Qc2+ 30.Kg1 Bf5 31.Qd1 Qxa2 32.Rg3 Qe2
Here is where I decided to go for a position
without risk. From initiative to material advantage with no risk. From the 10th
move until the end Black was leading the fight. Every single move creating
problems or adding piece that can create problems in the next move(s). 0-1

The students said they found the presentation
extremely worthwhile, and fellow instructor Gurevich was also impressed.
"I wish I didn't have to teach so I could have attended his lecture,"
he said. Gurevich, who was born and raised in Moscow but has lived in Chicago for more than two decades, gave
presentations to the middle and top groups. For the middle group, he focused on
the eternal struggle between the knight and the bishop, analyzed several
examples of good knights versus bad knights, and reviewed some unusual tactical
positions. He spent his time with the top group analyzing a complex endgame
involving lots of calculations, and introduced some examples of miscalculations
and blunders. "I tried to explain what types of mistakes GMs are
making," he said. "Hopefully they got an impression that we are not
that far ahead!"

Below is an example of a Gurevich lesson on pattern
recognition: Zapata,Alonso -
Polgar,J [B80]

34.b3 I witnessed this game
during the 1989 New York Open. At the time, it was shocking that a 12-year-old
girl managed to beat a Grandmaster! Can you figure out what Judit played here?

Two years later in Chicago Chess Center I was
able to repeat ' Polgar combination". Camilo Pangan had crushed me the day
before and I came back for revenge :)) He just played 24.Rf1? Can you figure
out my move?

A visitor to the seminar, Jerry Neugarten, who
chairs the ICA's newly established youth committee, commented on how impressed he was to see students as
young as grade-school age sitting in rapt attention for presentations
lasting up to two hours. "I've been coaching kids for 15 years," Jerry said, "and I've never seen
lessons of this quality. The coaches demanded deep and sustained concentration
from the kids, and got it."
The ICA Warren Scholar program relies on the generous
support of contributors. For more information about the program, visit www.il-chess.org